


The Name of Death

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Series: Wolf of Niflheim [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 05:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12764202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Loki and Hela have met many times before.





	The Name of Death

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness.

_“His heart's his mouth:_  
_What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;_  
_And, being angry, does forget that ever_  
_He heard the name of Death.”_  
_– Shakespeare, ‘Coriolanus’_

 

His earliest memory is a nightmare, a fleeting fragment of terror that never quite leaves him, of someone, some _thing_ , looming over his cradle, lingering in the corner of his room. Something that has his eyes, and his hair, that traces a cold finger down his cheek and laughs ever so softly that she will see him soon.

* * *

When he is fourteen, he falls ill with a mysterious sickness. Frigga and the healers work for days to cleanse his body of the fever and the raging infection that seems to come from nowhere. His limbs stiffen and swell and his throat closes up, and everyone comes and goes from the Hall of Healing with an air of muffled gloom. His life is despaired of.

Loki floats unmoored in a sea of pain, tethered only by his mother’s hand clinging to his own. There is a voice in his ears, not Frigga’s, but something deeper and older, calling him ‘son’, telling him that it is time for him to join her.

In his delirium, he cries out that the ghost is trying to drag him to Niflheim.

When Odin hears of his son’s ravings, he locks himself in his chambers with orders that he is not to be disturbed. All night he is heard pacing, shouting, at some unseen presence, and the palace shakes repeatedly with the discharge of seidr.

In the morning, Prince Loki’s fever breaks, and Odin seemed to have aged five hundred years overnight.

* * *

When the Mad Titan plucks him from the space between Realms, it is as a gift for his beloved.

“Finally,” she breathes, rising from her throne to take Loki’s frozen face in her hands. “My son.”

“No…n-not yours...”

The goddess of Death chuckles, low in her throat. “Of course mine. You look just like me. And like Odin, but that can’t be helped.” She strokes Loki’s disheveled hair, black as the bottom of a grave and the same shade as her own. “I think he even dressed you in my old clothes.”

“No. No!”

Her fingernails are sharp against his cold flesh. They should draw blood. But he has none left to flow. “...How?”

She smiles, a ghastly imitation of maternal fondness. “Jotunheim was easy prey, and its king was my prize.”

“You left me to die.”

She laughs at that, and Thanos’s hand is heavy on his shoulder, grinding his bones to powder.

“Of course I did. Odin was never going to let me keep you, his precious grandson. You had to die before I could get you back.”

She kisses his forehead possessively and then smiles upon Thanos. “Put him to work.”

* * *

Thor takes the mortal and leave him for dead on the dim howling plains of Svartalfheim. Part of him screams at the betrayal, while the rest of him realizes he brought it on himself.

The Kursed blood on the blade shoots through his veins like lightening and then hardens, trying to petrify him, but his strange heritage is too quick. Jotunn and Asgardian blood ally to heal him, to save him.

The gritty sand blasts across his skin, scouring away the creep of stone, but he has been run clean through, and the blood that struggled on his behalf is now seeping into the ground. “Mother...” he whispers, tears flowing down his cheeks. “Mother...”

There are two women standing over him, each holding out a beseeching hand. One wants back what is hers. The other simply wants him to get up.

“My son, come home. Together we will make him pay for everything.”

“My son, you must get up.”

“Let go, Loki. Fall. There is nothing left for you here.”

“Loki, _get up_.”

“My Loki, my prince of shadows, my stolen child, come home to your mother—”

From deep within his soul comes a rage he does not understand. “You’re _not_ my mother!” he shouts into the storm.

And then he is alone, and then he is alive, and thinks vaguely that it must be thanks to his mother.

* * *

On a grassy cliff on the coast of Norway, the princes face their sister. Thor speaks first. “You must be Hela. I’m Thor, son of Odin.”

“Really? You don’t look like him.”

Loki does not bother to introduce himself. He has the strangest feeling that they have met before.


End file.
